About the course
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a foundational architectural paradigm that centres on building enterprise IT systems as collections of loosely coupled, interoperable services that can be discovered and orchestrated to deliver business capabilities. While the peak era of "Big SOA" using specific middleware stacks may have passed, the core principles of designing with services, promoting reusability, enhancing agility, and managing complexity remain critically important for modern distributed architectures, including microservices, APIs, and event-driven systems. This 3-day intensive training course delves deep into the principles, concepts, methodologies, and essential governance required to successfully design, implement, and effectively manage systems following a service-oriented approach in today's IT landscape.
The course begins by exploring the business and technical drivers behind adopting SOA, outlining the journey towards a service-oriented vision using an adoption roadmap with different levels of maturity, drawing parallels with established models like CMMI. Participants will gain a clear understanding of the fundamental ideas of SOA, contrasting it with traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) approaches and discussing the strategic business impact, potential advantages, and inherent risks associated with this significant architectural shift. A core section focuses on the fundamental concepts that define SOA, including the different types of services, the historical need for and attempts at a reference architecture (briefly referencing historical work like OASIS), the crucial role of service registries and repositories, strategies for organising services in layers, deciding on appropriate service granularity, and addressing the persistent challenge of aligning Business and IT perspectives throughout the service lifecycle.
Furthermore, the workshop covers a Service Oriented Methodology, focusing on the service lifecycle from identification to retirement, exploring various service analysis and design techniques (including the importance of contract-driven development), common service-oriented patterns, and the relationship between SOA initiatives and agile development processes. Participants will learn how to define a practical Architectural Roadmap for introducing SOA capabilities incrementally and understand the technical concepts behind Service Enablement, including defining basic service elements, relevant standards (noting the evolution beyond just SOAP/WSDL), and the critical role of governance, registries, and quality gateways in ensuring service quality and compliance. Dedicated modules provide in-depth coverage of SOA Governance principles, justification, key performance indicators (KPIs), and the necessity of a central architecture board, as well as exploring the necessary Key Components of a SOA architecture (like ESBs – conceptually, registries, repositories, service frontends) and considerations for selecting appropriate Software Platforms and tools, referencing historical examples to illustrate the types of capabilities required. The course concludes by Learning from Case Studies, highlighting common anti-patterns, revisiting best practices, discussing the benefits and risks through real-world examples, and exploring why some SOA initiatives succeed while others fail, providing valuable lessons directly applicable to modern architectural challenges.
Instructor-led online and in-house face-to-face options are available - as part of a wider customised training programme, or as a standalone workshop, on-site at your offices or at one of many flexible meeting spaces in the UK and around the World.
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- Explain the business and technical drivers, benefits, and challenges of adopting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
- Understand the fundamental concepts of SOA, including service types, the role of reference architecture, registries and repositories, service layering, and granularity.
- Apply a service-oriented methodology for service analysis and design, including the importance of contract-driven development.
- Define an architectural roadmap and phased approach suitable for incrementally implementing SOA capabilities.
- Understand the concepts of Service Enablement, including defining basic service elements, relevant standards, and the purpose of quality gateways.
- Explain the principles and critical importance of SOA Governance, including justification and key activities like measuring performance and using a governance board.
- Identify the key functional components conceptually required for a SOA architecture (e.g., Enterprise Service Bus function, registry, repository) and understand criteria for selecting software platforms and tools.
- Learn from common SOA anti-patterns, revisit best practices, and identify the reasons for the success or failure of SOA initiatives through case studies.
- Discuss the relationship between historical SOA principles and modern architectural styles like microservices and API-led approaches.
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This 3-day intensive Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) workshop is designed for IT professionals involved in designing, implementing, managing, or making strategic decisions about enterprise-level IT systems and integration. It is ideal for:
Software Architects and Technical Leads responsible for designing complex system architectures.
Senior Developers interested in understanding the architectural principles behind building distributed systems.
IT Managers and Project Managers overseeing development and integration projects with a focus on reusability and agility.
Professionals involved in migrating from monolithic or traditional EAI systems to more flexible service-oriented or microservices architectures.
Anyone needing to understand the principles of building loosely coupled, interoperable, reusable, and scalable systems.
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Participants should have experience with software development or architecture concepts. Familiarity with the basic principles of distributed systems is helpful.
Understanding of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) concepts would also be beneficial, as the course contrasts SOA with traditional EAI approaches.
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This SOA course is available for private / custom delivery for your team - as an in-house face-to-face workshop at your location of choice, or as online instructor-led training via MS Teams (or your own preferred platform).
Get in touch to find out how we can deliver tailored training which focuses on your project requirements and learning goals.
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Introduction to SOA
The drivers for architectural restructuring: Why organisations look into SOA (agility, complexity, integration challenges).
The vision of a service-oriented enterprise.
Comparison: Problems with the Traditional EAI approach vs. Enter Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Introduction to a SOA adoption roadmap: Guiding the journey from current state towards the future vision.
SOA maturity levels: Using ideas from CMMI and other maturity models.
Interactive Discussion: Sharing experiences with integration challenges and monolithic systems.
Impact of a Service Oriented Architecture
How a SOA initiative improves the organization’s agility and business alignment.
Potential outcomes: shorter projects, vendor independence, more efficient development process.
Creating a common understanding of SOA across the organisation.
Communicating SOA's advantages to management and obtaining funding for the initiative.
The evolution of SOA, changing the mindset, and introducing the concept of services within the organisation.
Changing relationships with SOA tool vendors (historically and in the modern landscape).
The relationship between SOA principles and technology choices (loose coupling vs. specific tech).
Advantages and risks associated with SOA adoption.
Discussion/Analysis: Analysing the potential business impact of SOA in different organisational contexts.
Fundamental Concepts of SOA (Part 1)
What is a Service in SOA? Definition and characteristics.
What are the different types of services used in a SOA context? (e.g., Business Services, Enterprise Services, Application Services, Infrastructure Services).
The need for a reference architecture: Standardising the approach (referencing historical work like OASIS).
What are the advantages of categorising services?
Building from services: Composing services to create business processes.
Discussion: Categorising services in a sample business scenario.
Fundamental Concepts of SOA (Part 2)
The Registry and Repository: Their roles in service discovery and management.
Organizing services in different SOA layers (e.g., Orchestration, Business, Enterprise, Application).
Deciding on the service granularity level: Coarse-grained versus fine-grained approach (trade-offs).
Aligning Business and IT: Why it requires ongoing effort and won't happen overnight (communication, shared goals, governance).
Discussion/Exercise: Analysing service granularity for a sample business function, discussing challenges in Business-IT alignment.
A Service Oriented Methodology
The Service Lifecycle: From identification to retirement.
Methodology overview: Steps for successful service development (Identification, Specification, Realisation, Deployment, Management).
Different service analysis techniques: Choosing the right approach (e.g., Business Process Analysis, Domain Analysis, Legacy Analysis).
Service oriented analysis and design principles.
Agile Unified Process and SOA: Combining iterative development with service design (a match made in heaven?).
Contract-driven development: Focusing on the service contract as the primary deliverable.
Introduction to service oriented patterns (e.g., Service Façade, Service Gateway, Message Broker).
Overview of Service Component Architecture (SCA) (as a historical example of component-based service implementation).
Exercise: Applying service analysis techniques to identify potential services in a sample scenario, defining a simple service contract.
The Architectural Roadmap
The drivers for an Architectural Roadmap: Avoiding the ‘big bang’.
Benefits of a phased, incremental approach.
Defining different levels of sophistication or maturity stages for SOA implementation.
Challenges and benefits of achieving Fundamental SOA.
Challenges and benefits of achieving Networked SOA (inter-service communication).
Challenges and benefits of achieving Process-enabled SOA (orchestration, BPM).
Determining what level is right for your organisation based on current state and goals.
Discussion/Planning: Outlining a potential architectural roadmap for a sample organisation, defining milestones and levels.
Service Enablement (Part 1)
What types of services are considered mandatory or foundational for a SOA?
Defining the essential features a ‘real’ service should possess (discoverable, loosely coupled, composable, etc.).
Beware the risk of proliferation of technical service contracts.
The value of assigning a human readable document (service description) to each service.
Core services standards stacks (historical context: XML, Schema, WSDL, SOAP; modern context: REST, JSON, OpenAPI).
Exercise: Defining the characteristics of a "good" service, drafting a human-readable service description.
Service Enablement (Part 2)
The (un)importance of SOAP and WSDL in a modern SOA/Microservices context (historical significance vs. current practices like REST/OpenAPI).
Using UDDI-based registries (historical) vs. modern API gateways and service discovery mechanisms without a traditional monolithic repository.
The relationship between Services, the registry/repository, and the quality gateway.
Why do we need a quality gateway? (Policy enforcement, security, monitoring).
Discussion: Comparing historical standards/tools (SOAP/WSDL, UDDI) with modern equivalents (REST/JSON, OpenAPI, API Gateways, Service Meshes).
Governance, Components & Lessons Learned
Module 9: SOA Governance
Why SOA Governance isn’t optional, it’s imperative!
How SOA governance techniques differ from or complement traditional project management governance approaches.
Key arguments for justifying a SOA Governance Board or equivalent structure.
Building services with Business value in mind as a governance driver.
The service justification process.
Measuring and monitoring for continuous process improvement in a service-oriented environment.
Key performance indicators (KPIs): How to measure SOA success?
The need for a central architecture board or governance body to break down silos.
Choosing the right governance tools (policy engines, monitoring tools, registry/repository features).
Discussion: Establishing governance rules for sample services, defining relevant KPIs.
Key Components of a SOA
Understanding the necessary key components of a SOA architecture conceptually.
The risk in focusing too much on tools from the start of the SOA initiative.
Building a business component model as a starting point.
Focusing on basic services first: But how? (Identification strategies).
Can money buy a real enterprise service bus (ESB)? (Understanding ESB concepts vs. product capabilities, modern alternatives).
The importance of service frontends (API Gateways, Bounded Contexts).
The Business and IT view through the registry and repository (single source of truth).
How data-centric basic services can render traditional EAI links obsolete (data virtualisation, service exposing data).
Discussion: Identifying key architectural components needed for a service initiative, discussing build vs. buy for ESB functionality and its modern equivalents.
Software Platforms for SOA
Key features one should look for in a SOA toolset or platform today: design and execution environment.
The SOA Development Life Cycle and the different roles involved (Service Analyst, Service Developer, Service Administrator, etc.).
Examples using specific vendors (BizTalk, Oracle SOA Suite, Tibco, webMethods - presented as historical examples illustrating platform capabilities).
How to select a genuine registry and repository? (Examples using HP Systinet and Software AG Centrasite - presented as historical examples; modern service discovery tools).
The Business Rules Engine: Its role in service logic (Examples: Ilog, Fair Isaac, JRules - presented as historical examples; modern rules engine platforms).
Discussion: Mapping roles to modern development teams, identifying key capabilities needed in modern platforms/tools for service development/management.
Learning from Case Studies and Conclusions
Learning from real-world examples: Pitfalls and anti-patterns our consultants encountered on-the job.
Overview of common SOA anti-patterns (e.g., God Service, Chatty Services, Excessive Orchestration).
Finding added value in case studies from other organizations operating in the same industry.
Best practices revisited based on lessons learned.
The benefits and risks associated with the SOA approach (summary).
Deciding on a Pilot project: Strategies for success and getting the necessary funding.
Setting the right expectations, the need for regular feedback to management.
Why some SOA initiatives never see any return on investment? (Common pitfalls).
Conclusions and Where do we go from here? (Connecting SOA principles to Microservices, APIs, and the future).
Case Study Analysis/Discussion: Analysing case studies highlighting anti-patterns and lessons learned, discussing applying lessons to future initiatives.
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Introduction to Microservices Architecture: Understand how microservices relate to and differ from SOA.
Overview of Event-Driven Architecture (EDA):.
API Management Concepts: Relevant to service interfaces, security, and governance in modern architectures.
CMMI Institute: Provides information on capability and maturity models, which can be related to SOA adoption roadmaps.
Introduction to Web Services (W3C): Historical context for foundational web service standards like SOAP and WSDL.
SOA Governance Frameworks: Resources discussing different models and approaches to governing service-oriented systems.
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